World oil prices inched higher on Friday but came off peaks of US$52 a barrel following sharp increases in US crude inventories that suggested an easing of supply worries, dealers said.
New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in June, added just US$0.13 to US$50.96 a barrel having at one point been as high as US$52.15.
In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in June actually went down, ceding US$0.36 to close at US$50.77.
"Supply is abundant so prices sold off going into the closing," Refco analyst Marshall Steeves said.
He ascribed much of the late downturn to pre-weekend "short-covering" after the June New York contract had gone up US$0.70 on Thursday.
The market was still feeling the after-effects of figures released by the US Department of Energy on Wednesday that showed gasoline supplies for the week ending April 29 rose 2.2 million barrels to 213.5 million, comfortably beating market expectations.
US stocks of gasoline remain under scrutiny ahead of the traditional high-demand holiday period starting at the end of May -- when many Americans take to the open road.
"Oil prices are higher even though [US] inventories are going up," Williams de Broe analyst Richard Griffin said.
"The real test will be the gasoline stock level at the end of May," he added.
Oil prices dipped on Wednesday on news of the sharp weekly rise in US crude and gasoline stockpiles but rebounded as speculative traders took advantage of a volatile market.
Market watchers "said a failure to breach key support in the US$50 to US$50.50 range was bullish for Brent, though they doubted that a deeper seasonal decline had been completely halted," according to analysts at the Sucden brokerage firm.
Elsewhere, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said the subject of oil price concerns came up during talks with US President George W. Bush in Washington on Thursday.
Nigeria is the world's ninth leading oil producer and fourth within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
"Nigeria, alone by itself, cannot bring prices down. We have to work together in the OPEC," he said.
At its March meeting in Isfahan, Iran, the oil cartel raised its production ceiling by 500,000 barrels per day to 27.5 million barrels per day, and said a similar increase would be considered if high prices continued.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by